Azerbaijan and Armenia discussed peace and Lachin in Washington

On May 1, for the first time since September 2022, Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan met in the suburbs of Washington, mediated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The reason for the meeting was the situation in the Lachin corridor, where on April 23 Azerbaijan installed its checkpoint on the border with Armenia, effectively limiting traffic between it and Karabakh.

Thus, another round of discussions on the agreement on the normalization of relations between Yerevan and Baku was held in the American capital. Blinken first met with Mirzoyan and then with Bayramov separately at the George Shultz National Training Center for Foreign Affairs in Arlington, a Washington suburb. A trilateral meeting was then held there as well.

Following the meeting, the press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmedthat the situation in the field of security in the region, the issues of normalizing relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the problem of the blockade of the Lachin corridor were discussed in a trilateral format. The Armenian side did not mention any specific agreements reached.

Prior to that, on the night of May 1, Blinken had a telephone conversation with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and shared “his belief that peace is possible” (quote from the press service of the US State Department). “Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint in the Lachin Corridor undermines efforts to build confidence in the peace process and underscored the importance of opening the Lachin Corridor to commercial and private traffic as soon as possible,” the US Foreign Office said in a statement. On Twitter, the Secretary of State assured of his readiness to help resolve the situation.

On Saturday, April 29, Blinken also had a separate conversation with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. According to the press service of the Armenian government, the head of state told the Secretary of State that Azerbaijan’s actions in the Lachin corridor “are aimed at ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and the complete expulsion of Armenians” and “violate regional security.” Blinken, in turn, follows from the statement of the State Department, “confirmed that direct dialogue and diplomacy are the only way to lasting peace in the South Caucasus.”

On April 23, Azerbaijani border guards set up a checkpoint on the border with Armenia at the beginning of the road that leads to Stepanakert (the so-called Lachin corridor, the area of ​​responsibility of Russian peacekeepers). Baku explained that this “will ensure the legality and transparency of movement along this road”, before that the Azerbaijani side accused Armenia of transporting weapons and personnel of armed formations to Karabakh in violation of the agreements.

The “unilateral” installation of the checkpoint was condemned by Russia and Armenia as a violation of the provisions of the tripartite agreement to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh of November 2020. Yerevan called for an end to the “illegal blockade of the corridor and ensuring the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from the entire security zone of the Lachin corridor. They condemned Baku’s move and called for the United States and France to return to the implementation of the agreements – since 1992, together with Russia, they have been co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

In addition, since December 12, 2022, traffic along the Lachin corridor was actually blocked by an indefinite action of Azerbaijani environmental activists on a section of the road near Shusha. According to the organizers, the purpose of the rally is to prevent Armenia from exploiting the natural resources of Karabakh. On February 22, the International Court of Justice ordered Baku to allow free passage along this route, but the Azerbaijani authorities ignored this decision.

First of all, the problem of concluding a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is in the focus of attention of the foreign ministers, political scientist Andrey Areshev believes. “The Lachin corridor, although it was announced as an occasion, is most likely not the central issue of discussions – everything has been going on to install the checkpoint for a long time and, probably, there were even behind-the-scenes negotiations on this topic earlier,” the expert believes. Areshev, however, admitted that the parties discussed the technical issues of the functioning of the checkpoint on the Lachin road in the new conditions.

The problem of delimitation and demarcation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is another acute and second most important point in the negotiations, the political scientist added. “For Moscow, a peace treaty is not just a piece of paper, it is important that the peace process be supported by some practical steps. Washington, first of all, needs to conclude some kind of agreement, what will happen next, it doesn’t matter to them, ”the expert believes. He added that the United States is forcing the signing of a peace treaty to weaken Russia’s influence and turn the South Caucasus into a single region oriented towards the West. A side goal of Washington is also to contain Iran on its northern borders and create the most uncomfortable conditions for the joint transport and logistics projects promoted by Moscow and Tehran in the region, the expert concluded.